Fig. 1.

Synthesis of a diverse library of polymers sensitive to slight acidic shifts. (A) Modular acetal exchange (Top) and polycondensation (Bottom) reactions to polymerize polyol (blue) and acetal or vinyl ether (red) monomers into polyacetals. A diverse set of monomers was used to create 936 unique polyacetals using a high-throughput combinatorial synthesis approach. (B) Polyacetal degradation reaction under acidic conditions. (C) Set of 36 polyol monomers for polyacetal synthesis. (D) Set of seven acetals (Left) and six vinyl ethers (Right) for polyacetal synthesis. (E) High-throughput fluorometric assay of polyacetal pH sensitivity. Each polyacetal was created from the combination of one polyol monomer (A1–CL2) and one acetal (E1–E5) or vinyl ether (VE1–VE5) monomer. Several polymers were highly sensitive to acidic conditions (red).